Carlyle's letters vary in price from £2 2s. to £5 5s. or more. The following note explains how the specimen of his calligraphy I reproduce was obtained for an autograph hunter by his nephew in 1877:—
Newlands Cottage
7th December 1877
My dear Sir,—I was much pleased to have your's of the 4th inst. I enclose card of admission to the Installn at Edinburgh which I cribbed from the Govr's Sunday coat long after its date, and which to tell the truth I did not intend to part with; but I think it so thoroughly what your friend would like that I have resolved to send it.
All Uncle Tom's late letters to his relatives are written on scraps of paper that might be at hand when he finished work for the day and signed 'T. C.' only—all full signatures in letters in my possession have long ago been clipped off....
Always faithfully your's
James Carlyle.
The letters of Whistler have quadrupled in value since his death. I possess several of them, but only give as an illustration of his handwriting a post-card from Lyme Regis bearing by way of signature the once familiar butterfly. "Mark Twain" was also a very amusing letter-writer. The following postscript is characteristic of his humour:—
Since penning the foregoing the "Atlantic" has come to hand with that most thoroughly and entirely satisfactory notice of "Roughing it," and I am as uplifted and reassured by it as a mother who has given birth to a white baby when she was awfully afraid it was going to be a mulatto. I have been afraid and shaky all along, but now unless the N. of "Tribune" gives the book a black eye, I am all right.
With many thanks
Twain
